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Caramel95

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Feb 21, 2012
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im playing my first ever game as England, Scotland is a vassal, I own all of Ireland and sold everything on the continent. Since the beginning baring a few years ive controller of the cardinals, however im not now, its 1433 and i have +3 stability. My problem is with my finances. im on like -22 ductats every month and im loaned up to the eyeballs only managing to stay afloat. i dont know what to do!
My income is:
121% tax
24% Production
28% trade
0 gold
0% tariffs

i have my maintenance of army and naval just over half way point.
Most of my research goes into trade so i can get quest for new world.
help!!!
 
Dont go over land/naval force limits. You will pay exponentially more and more money for every unit over the limit!

When at peace lower the land/naval maintenance.

Build tax_income / direct_tax_percentage buildings, that WILL help.

Go land slider etc.
 
Hi,

Compared to my game at that stage, I was on -19 a month, so no big deal. Your tax rate seems low though, I was at 174% at the date. You might want to look at national decisions etc to see if there are any available to boost that.

Otherwise, it's just a general case that you rely on your yearly income on the first of Jan each year to support you through the year, rather than balancing your books every month. So, don't spend on the first of January, leave that cash alone to get through the year, basically.

It sounds as though you've overspent somewhere - too many armies raised too quickly maybe? - to have to take loans, so probably need to retrench a bit, as loans are a pain in the neck.

That said, there are a couple of things that might help get you out of the mire.

First, if you're in the Hanseatic Trade League, & haven't already, see if you can drop merchants into Lubeck. If you can, if they don't get competed out by the end of the year, do that, as the trade income is nice.

Second, if you have a useful army, consider war for fun & profit. Particularly as you sold learning or wanting to just colonise/trade) you don't have to worry about anyone on the continent invading the British Isles - you should still have England's overwhelmingly powerful fleet. So, if you can get yourself involved with a nice little European war, you might find you can demand ducats in peace deals.

Oh, & if you haven't already, move toward centralised (helps income, tax I think) & look into forming GB as well.

Good luck.
 
Loans = death.
Whenever I accidentally take one, I concentrate on paying it back immediately.

I prefer minting over loans. But not much...
Try 0% maintenance if your ships are at port and armies at home.

Learn to balance your budget. Annual taxes should be enough for all your discretionary spending during the year.
Learning trade mechanics is also key, but their returns go to sliders (research) - or can be minted.

Minting during war taxes gives best bang for the buck.

Open up EU3 Wiki.
 
Most important thing. You seem like a new player. When you are not at war? 0% Army/Navy Maintenance. Any extra money spent on them is wasted. You want to get your morale back up when you are entering war or you feel like you need to enter war, in which case 100% Army maintenance is then fine again.

Besides that, it's fairly simple. If you can't afford everything you're spending money on, think of some way to cut your expenses or expand your revenue. You're coming on here shouting to the world "I'm going bankrupt! HALP!" and we have no idea what is going on in your game at all. You can cut expenses by disbanding some of your army, lowering your colonization rate, keeping all your provinces from falling to rebels, and so on. You can expand your revenue by making sure you take all decisions that give you more money such as the Liquor Tax, minting at the cost of inflation, getting cores on your provinces, building tax buildings that give your base high-income provinces an even greater bonus to your treasury, and so on.

Another common problem with new players is that their nation is not strong economically in order to prosper. You should always be above 50% in the compete chance when you are trying to get deep into a COT. If you are not and you continue to throw money at it, people will just compete you right back out of the COT and the money spent to get in there in the first place is wasted. The most important thing to remember in trade is your competitors. When they try to get into a COT, they will target the weakest nation in the COT to try to get them out. If you are the weakest nation in a COT at that point, then you shouldn't be in a COT to begin with! The easiest way to rectify this is to take the idea that increases your compete chance by 10% or take some slider movements in the area of free trade. Both will increase your compete chance exponentially and make it harder for you to get kicked out of a COT. Which is important because when you have a big presence in a COT, you can mint more money and tech faster.
 
Don't send any merchants to cots with value less than 200. Or do the math (cost vs. yearly take).
I think the cost of merchants was the same if you had 1 or 5 merchants in COT. Sending them costs each, but not upkeep.
So fill the wealthiest COT first, then proceed to next (unless difference in compete chance is drastic).

Select National Ideas wisely. For a trader +Trade Efficiency and +Compete Chance are excellent.
For France or other high tax country +10% taxes is nice.
For Britain the idea which halves ship prices and upkeep can be handy (esp. if you need to rebuild tens of ships, like when you change from Carracks to Caravels).
 
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thank you for helping, ive actually got positive money, however my tax is only 83%, how do i raise taxes?. i have my two merchants going to the ones with the most money. but for some reason im not getting any revenue out of them? should i switch them to other ones. Also where do you find your man power and how many troops you can have? i have a total of 11'000.
 
Don't send any merchants to cots with value less than 200. Or do the math (cost vs. yearly take).
I think the cost of merchants was the same if you had 1 or 5 merchants in COT. Sending them costs each, but not upkeep.
So fill the wealthiest COT first, then proceed to next (unless difference in compete chance is drastic).

Select National Ideas wisely. For a trader +Trade Efficiency and +Compete Chance are excellent.
For France or other high tax country +10% taxes is nice.
For Britain the idea which halves ship prices and upkeep can be handy (esp. if you need to rebuild tens of ships, like when you change from Carracks to Caravels).

Well i don't agree about not sending merchants to cot's with less value than 200 - you can send merchants there, if you think you will win, and you have much of spare money.
Value you get from each merchant in COT simplified is X/240 * TE. If COT value is =/> 240 you gain ~1 ducat at 100% TE, and it is 0,2 for 20% TE(Most country have at least 20 TE). But if you have high TE, even a small COT can bring you some increase in monthly income that goes to your treasury. But i think it is totaly not worth to send if a cot value is below 48, as at 100 TE you would get 1 ducat for 5 merchants, which for 20% TE is 0.2. for 120 value at 20% TE you get 0,1.

So, well if you do not have much cash, sending to such small COT's does not worth, but if you got much of unused money even this 0,1 ducat is important.
 
thank you for helping, ive actually got positive money, however my tax is only 83%, how do i raise taxes?. i have my two merchants going to the ones with the most money. but for some reason im not getting any revenue out of them? should i switch them to other ones. Also where do you find your man power and how many troops you can have? i have a total of 11'000.

Increasing stability, and taking war taxes, plus some decisions, and events increase it.
 
ok :) Well i think ive sorted it out. Castille just tried to conquest me because i have Gibraltar, but Denmark, Portugal and Aragon are my allies so Castille got slayed i think i got a good deal out of it :)
 
ok. how do you get prestige? im on like -21 and national decisions raise it a little then it just plummets down again.
All sorts of things change it, but the biggest ones are rebels and wars. If rebels are occupying a lot of stuff and/or you're performing poorly in wars your prestige will be nuked.
 
Fun fact:

If you are ever in a situation where you have no valid missions, you can take out a loan and get the mission to pay it back, which reduces your inflation really quickly.
 
Yep. I mean, it's pretty tough to run out of missions, particularly if you're playing in Europe, but totally doable.

The reward for paying it back is losing 1 inflation, BTW.